Chapter 26: Chapter 25
TL/ED: Hamsterminator
City Government's Blade.
Leaving behind words as cold as frost, the woman turned her head and began to walk.
Her steps, which felt strangely weightless, moved forward soundlessly for a few paces.
Reaching a dark open space with not a single streetlamp, she lightly placed her foot on thin air.
Shooooooo-
With an engine sound that defied gravity, four blue flames ignited simultaneously, resembling a turbo lighter enlarged a hundredfold.
Immediately after, a translucent blue outline emerged in the darkness, an aircraft without wings began to take shape in the air that had seemed empty just moments before.
Ziiiing-
The door opened on its own, and the woman boarded.
Through the narrowing gap of the closing door, her blue-white eyes seemed to gaze in this direction.
Then, the aircraft rose with a gust of wind and disappeared beyond the night sky in an instant.
Jin, who had been staring blankly at the scene, dropped his jaw.
"...Crazy."
It was the first time he had seen an aerial vehicle (AV) up close like this.
He hadn't even realized it was there until it started up.
This was a technology defined as optical camouflage.
An overtechnology that, on Jin’s home soil, had been surrounded by rumors for over a decade about whether the U.S. had developed it or not, and generally believed to be far from reality.
Not knowing much about such things, Jin simply recalled a paper plane that cost 150 minerals and 100 gas. (TL Note: Reference to StarCraft)
Wow. A cloaked wraith. (TL Note: Reference to StarCraft)
He was purely impressed, if only briefly.
As the tension eased, intense pain surged through his body, which he had been forcing to hold on.
Unconsciously, Jin collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.
The impact from the fall must have been severe.
In fact, he had no memory of the moment he hit the ground.
Had he undergone reconstruction or whatever it was called again this time?
At this point, it felt like he had briefly died and come back to life.
Drenched in cold sweat and trying to recover, Jin suddenly looked back at Mikel.
“......”
Eyes out of focus, a sword piercing through his head.
Come to think of it, he didn’t even know the guy’s name.
Not that he ever wanted to, he only remembered him as the seller, someone whose face he might forget in just a few days.
Jin quietly stared at that face for a while.
Then, once he had recovered enough to move, he took the ring from the dead man’s hand.
***
Everyone has probably had an experience like that at least once.
XX is targeting you.
You’ve either heard it, passed it on, or listened in curiously from a distance.
Something like that anyway.
Usually, these experiences are tied to the turbulent years of adolescence.
Depending on what kind of person XX is, the one hearing it might react with, “Why me...?” in fear, or burn with rage, “Fuck, who does he think he is?!” They might even go confront the person first.
In Khalifa’s case, it was neither.
She merely gave a faint smile.
And muttered to herself, “Interesting", like cigarette smoke drifting into the air.
Relieved by that calm reaction, Jin felt oddly like he’d been a snitch in the middle.
Especially since he would’ve felt uneasy if his words had made her panic or rage.
At the same time, a thought came to him.
Looks like I picked the right Linker.
“What was she? That AV was seriously cool.”
“She was probably a troubleshooter for the city government. Lost City has erratic standards for national property, so if they deem something needs retrieval, they’ll take direct action. Still, it’s strange. Even if it was genuine, it didn’t seem like the kind of item the city government would covet...”
Trailing off, Khalifa brushed her fallen bangs up with her hand.
Then, casting her gaze to the side, she asked.
“Poe. Are you disappointed?”
At that, the bartender, who had been examining the ring through a monocle, clicked the lens cover shut and looked up.
“Not at all. It's unfortunate that it's not a genuine piece, but thankfully this item is definitely from that era. That alone makes it a modest success.”
Khalifa raised her eyebrows with a look that said, “Did you hear that?” and Jin, watching them, picked up a cookie and spoke.
“So, the Age of Light and Roses is a pretty valuable era.”
“Oh. Jin.”
For a moment, Khalifa touched her forehead with her hand.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know? Well, I guess it’s possible. But still, you're..."
"I'm?"
"You look no different from a purist on the outside."
......? What’s that got to do with how I look?
Just as Jin was thinking that, his awareness radar suddenly lit up.
He recalled what kind of people Purists worshipped.
“Ah, so the Age of Light and Roses is...?”
“Yeah. It’s the era before humanity faced the great upheaval of cyberspace. It’s also the spiritual homeland that Purists long for.”
“Artifacts are treasures lost during that era. Their value varies wildly, but even the lowest-grade ones are still worth at least hundreds of millions.”
Poe naturally chimed in, adding depth to Khalifa’s explanation, and Khalifa picked it up again from there.
“That’s why there are quite a few treasure hunters who specialize in tracking down artifacts. A lot of them even have bounties attached. For example, the ‘Eternal East’ that the Marzie Family has been searching for over hundreds of years, its reward isn’t money. It’s the position of the next family head.”
At that, Jin’s pupils widened slightly.
Maybe I should ditch the solo life and become a treasure hunter?
Of course, it never went beyond a thought.
He had been hopeless at treasure hunts ever since his snot-nosed childhood.
Whenever he searched, there was never anything there. But if someone else searched the same spot, they’d pull something out like magic.
So it’s better to just stick to what I’m doing.
With that conclusion, Jin munched on a cookie, thinking that his knowledge, or was it common sense?, had increased by half a notch again today.
“So how does it feel to have passed through the sieve?”
Khalifa’s follow-up question made Jin shrug lightly.
“Eh. Just feels like, ‘So that’s that'?”
“Well, it’s probably not that special for you anyway.”
With those words, Khalifa bent her waist.
Then she placed a black suitcase-like bag on the table and said,
“13 million credits. I added a little extra to the base pay we agreed on.”
“13 million? It was a counterfeit. Does it even have an appraisal value?”
“Think of it as a gesture of goodwill. The job turned out messier than expected, and you went through quite a lot. Plus, we did spring it on you without warning. Anyway, the request is...”
“Wait!”
Before she could say “request complete", Jin quickly raised his palm and took a deep breath.
“Just need a moment to prepare myself.”
“......?”
With Khalifa glancing at Poe as if to say, “What’s going on?” Jin remained serious in his own way.
This request was exactly his third one.
Naturally, the quest would be marked as complete.
And the reward was a whopping 10,000 XP.
He couldn’t even begin to estimate how much dopamine that would release.
So before coming to Anecdote, he even stopped by the restroom.
Just in case something... slipped out.
“All right. Go ahead and say what you were about to earlier. The request...?”
Khalifa looked at Jin, who had spun his hand twice and now held his palm out toward himself, then let out a small laugh.
"Really. You're impossible to figure out...Complete. The request is complete."
At the same time, the Status Window popped up before his eyes, glowing with a (Complete!) tag.
[(Unknown) Story has been unlocked.]
In an instant, the world split apart.
*
What?
Startled, Jin looked around frantically.
The world split, and split again, and again.
At last, what was born was a checkered cosmos.
A chaos of countless intersecting horizontal and vertical lines.
At its center, a hollow formed and began to pull Jin in.
There was no resisting it.
In the face of a force that devoured life itself, he was utterly insignificant.
And so.
Into a storm of incomprehensible random codes pouring down like a downpour,
An infinite corridor welcomed him.
At first, Jin was completely overwhelmed and couldn’t gather his senses. But as the endless fall continued, he gradually found the presence of mind to observe his surroundings.
So when he reached out carefully toward the erratic wave of numbers brushing past his eyes.
A speck of light, no bigger than a grain of millet, began to grow in sync with its falling speed.
And in the blink of an eye, Jin was hurled into a blinding light that consumed his entire field of vision.
Amid fading consciousness, he thought he felt a hand brush his cheek.
*
"Huk!"
As if exhaling a breath he’d held for years, Jin’s eyes flew open.
Then he fumbled around his eyes, nose, mouth, and shoulders, clearly looking like someone who had just woken up from a nightmare.
Khalifa, who was startled along with him, shouted.
“Jin-? Jin! What’s wrong?”
“...Huh? Oh, no. It’s nothing.”
Snapping back to his senses at her voice, Jin glanced left and right with his eyes.
Only after confirming that the one uneaten cookie and the half-full milk were still there did he breathe a sigh of relief.
What the hell was that?
That bizarre, indescribable experience already felt like something from long ago.
So, to shake off the groggy feeling.
As Jin scrubbed his face dry with his hands, Khalifa asked.
“Did something happen?”
“No. Just felt a little dizzy.”
“Hmm.”
Unconvinced by Jin’s answer, Khalifa crossed her arms and continued.
“How about taking a good two weeks off? No, just do it. Think about it. Crow, then a government agent from the city. No matter how you look at it, that’s not normal. It’s not like you’re cursed. Even someone with good luck has limits. At this rate, next time it’ll be... never mind. I’m not saying it. Anyway, go rest. And don’t come looking for work until two full weeks pass, I won’t give you any, just so you know.”
“You should follow the manager’s advice, Jin.”
“Ah. Yeah.”
Jin nodded reflexively.
It was starting to feel like he had to grab the money bag and walk out immediately.
Before that, he asked a question he had already been thinking about.
“Just one thing before I go. How much would it cost to get a proper ID?”
He couldn’t live forever feeling the pressure of unmanageable cash.
So he might as well get out of this undocumented status and at least open a bank account, he threw out the question, and Poe replied.
“If you’re referring to a forged identity, the market price is typically around 30 million credits. Shall I connect you with someone who can do the job?”
***
After finishing a chaotic day, Jin arrived at the motel and collapsed onto the bed.
Looking at the buzzing terminal,
He had two messages.
One was an address from Poe for the document handler,
The other was from Jackie.
[You okay?]
Jin replied that it was nothing and that they’d meet next week, then let his arm drop.
He was tired, but he couldn’t sleep yet.
Thanks to the abundance of experience points, enough to light up two star paths.
Jin closed his eyes.
Before he knew it, his expanded consciousness faced a vast night sky.
“......”
Glancing at the constellation shining brightly in the shape of a clenched fist, Jin turned his head toward the outline of another one, far larger but dimmer.
[Mana]
The second constellation Jin had chosen.
At first, he thought it looked like a staff.
But on closer inspection, it resembled a tree much more.
Its soaring trunk and the many branching limbs splitting off along the way, so many and so dense, it made him wonder if it was even realistically possible to light them all up.
Of course, Jin didn’t have that many options yet.
And with good reason, he still needed to solidify the trunk that would support all those uniquely shaped branches.
Thinking about that, a new question emerged.
Wouldn’t that make a mana-using character way too slow to develop?
But the person who wrote the guide had said that this family had the highest early-game firepower.
(Vagabond is the most stable, Corporation is the wealthiest.)
So there must be something.
Ugh. My head hurts.
I should’ve studied the guide more carefully.
Jin’s nose twitched as he kept his eyes closed.
Screw it. I’m doing my thing.
He followed the star path straight through.
[Mana Circuit (Lv2)]
He first selected the essential passive that boosts total mana and output.
Then poured experience into the next star as well.
Yeah, this one’s the key.
Teleport, which always ranks high in the list of superpowers people want to have!
...Though it's a bit inferior compared to that, it's still something anyone would covet.
[Blink]
Jin opened his eyes.
~~~
Hi! If you are enjoying this novel, please leave a rating and review on NovelUpdates via the link below. Thanks!